This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

22
The Progress of the Races
Reid’s first name, but be was a blacksmith for the Poitevent & Favre Lumber Company, doing general work for the sawmill. Reid entered a tract of land about four miles east of Pearlington, near Devil Swamp. He built a good house on it and fenced in a few acres for a little farm, and had intended to raise hogs and cattle, but his house having been destroyed by fire, he abandoned the premises and moved to Bay Saint Louis.
Bricklayers
Clark Benjamin, Benjamin Thornton and Wilbert George—these men built Chimneys and made pillars for houses; they built and repaired furnaces at the sawmills. There were only two brick buildings in these towns—a bank at Pearlington and a store at Logtown.
Foreman of Lumber-Yard, and Dry Kilns Joe Thompson, George Burton, Moses N. Peters, Caesar West, and Samuel
D.	Snell were foremen who worked for the Poitevent & Favre Lumber Company. They employed men and boys to pile lumber on the lumber-yard; they classified the lumber and superintended the drying in the kilns.
Ed Christmas, William Crosby, Oscar Williams, Joseph Winston, and
C.	S. T. Adams were foremen and contractors for the H. Weston Lumber Company. Winston was a stevedore. He employed a large crew of men to load lumber 011 barges and railroad cars for shipping. He was paid by the thousand and paid his men the best wages on the river. Winston had the best job in handling lumber of any colored man on the river. Adams came next. With his crew of men and boys he piled all of the lumber at one of the mills and operated the dry kiln also. Henry Weston, the president of the company, in referring to Adams as an employee, said: “A better man never was born.” Few men have received such a commendation from their employer. Adams was a deacon in the First Baptist Church at Pearlington, and superintendent of the Sunday school for 27 years.
Luke Richardson and albert Walker, The Loggers Richardson and Walker ran logs of their own on Pearl River. They had ox teams of their own, employed men to fell the timber and to haul it to the river, after which they employed men to help run the logs to the mills at Gainesville, Logtown, and Pearlington, where they sold them to the lumbermen. Richardson and Walker carried on a lucrative business in timber-getting when cypress and yellow pine were plentiful on Pearl River. Richardson owned a sawmill on the river in Marion County. He lived about four miles above Pearlington 011 Bogue Houma Ridge, while Walker lived at Sun Post-Otiice, Washington Parish, La. Richardson got his logs on Pearl River in the State of Mississippi, and Walker his on Bogue Chitto River, in Louisiana, a tributary of Pearl River; but both reached the same point in selling at the mills.
Aaron Dorsey’s Thrift Aaron Dorsey first lived on Mill Creek. He came to Pearl River about 25 years ago and bought a 20-acre piece of land midway between Pearlington and Logtown. He cleared away enough land to make a nice little farm and gradually cut away the rest into logs, wood, and burned charcoal and
The Progress of the Races
23
sold them for a livelihood. He built a good house on his farm and he had a mule team that he used for general hauling in the towns and vicinity. Before he came to Pearl River, he ran logs, chopped wood, and burned charcoal on Jordan River. He built the barge Jennie Dorsey (named after his daughter) on Jordan River, and ran her in lumber, wood and charcoal to New Orleans. He also carried a good bank account.
William Winston’s Pump
While William Winston was a contracting stevedore for the Poitevent & Favre Lumber Company for many years, loading lumber on their deep water vessels 011 Pearl River and the Mississippi Sound, bound for foreign ports, he also had another occupation which deserves much credit. For many years the water supply at Pearlington and within a radius of five miles was obtained from what was known as the creole cistern. The creole cistern diffei'ed from a well. It was a hole dug in the ground about 5 or 6 feet deep and from 6 to 8 feet square, built of cypress lumber and curbed watertight, bottom and sides, with a cover over it. It was supplied with rain water from the roof of the house by means of gutters placed under the eaves and extending to the cistern. In the fall of the year, which was the dry season there, and especially in the month of September, the water in these cisterns would become low and stagnant, and infested with wiggletails and red bugs, unless a turtle or two were kept in the cistern to destroy them. To swallow one of these aquatic insects would be nauseating. When the turtle was not used the water had to be strained before you could drink it. It was not straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel, but straining at wiggle tails and red bugs and swallowing a lot of chills and fever, which sometimes resulted in death. Well water could be had at 10 or 12 feet depth, but this was mere surface wrater and was not fit to drink. At this season the water in the river was salt.
Therefore, William Winston, a colored man who did not know his letters, thought to drive a pump and go deeper and get better water, and he succeeded. Winston began driving his pumps nearly a half century ago, and probably drove a thousand at Pearlington and within a radius of five miles. Practically every home now has a pump. The creole cistern has been discarded and become obsolete. Before this nearly every home in the fall of the year would have a case of chills and fever. Now the malaria in a great measure has been eradicated.
Had William Winston lived in the days of Jacob, when a well digger was considered great, doubtless his portrait would have been placed in the hall of fame and his name enrolled among the great men of that day. But a man must do something extraordinary in this modern age to be called great. However, Winston has passed on, but he has left his footprints on the sands of time.
Co-Partnership of Dr. Geo. C. McGowan and Hiram C. Pringle
Dr. McGowan and Pringle, both living at Pearlington, but carried 011 a hardwood business at Hub, Miss. Dr. McGowan put up the money to start the business and Pringle ran the business, the profits being divided equally. Pringle employed hands to help him chop the wood and load it on railroad cars,